Yes, I work withe SOX compliance too and I agreed that it cost a lot of money.
But there was good that it did because it put the CEO and CFO on the hook for fraud, which they hadn't previously been. You seem have focused entirely on the extra waste rather than the positive that it did achieve.
I think the core issues with the original question are still the inability to define a lot of things are purely left or right policies, except maybe in the past 20 years AND that you can make arguments for the positive and negative on anything. I can even go to Gay Marriage and say that it's 100% supported by the Constitution and the 1st Amendment because personal beliefs about Christian matrimony are religious beliefs and cannot be established as official law. Marriage is a personal belief and the government has no business defining it one way or another.
The point that keeps being missed is there is a balance of cost vs benefit. Nobody is saying problems should not be addressed. What we are saying is when the solution begins to have a cost way greater than the benefit, that's a whole new problem. The cure is worse than the disease. I can't speak to SOX compliance because I know nothing about it but when people who do know, who work directly with it, say the cost way exceeds the benefit, we should listen.
The problem is people run on their emotions and not rationality. CEOs are seen as rich and greedy so we need to "get" them and it's irrelevant if more harm is done than is worth it. You can apply this to a lot of things and both liberals and conservatives are guilty, but liberals tend to apply it much more and in ways much more damaging.
* I feel rent is too high! Poor people need lower rent because I feel sorry for them and I can't be bothered to look at the actual long term result of rent control because the logical part of my brain is eclipsed by my feeeeeeeelings.
* Criminals are evil and need to be punished and it doesn't matter if too many innocents are wrongly convicted because I feel very emotional and angry about crime.
* Drugs are bad and we must eliminate drugs and it doesn't matter if innocent pain patients and their doctors are wrongly persecuted, because I have a loved one ruined by drugs so I feeeeeel very emotional about this.
* Global warming is scary and the sea levels are rising and it doesn't matter that eliminating fossil fuels will cause mass economic collapse, because my emotion of fear must be addressed by draconian policy.
* Guns are evil. It doesn't matter that gun control
causes more crime. My emotions tell me we need to get rid of all guns!
* The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination and so we can't let gays marry because I am very emotional about my faith.
* I feeeeeeeeel emotional about animals and so everyone should be forced to be vegan and I don't care if it causes nutritional deficiencies.
* I feeeel bad when animals are killed for their furs so I don't care that fake fur is made of plastic and is far more harmful to the environment. I actually cry tears over the poor little animals so I need to force everyone else to not wear real fur and I don't care that humans have been killing animals for their fur for a million years and it's actually perfectly normal and acceptable to Mother Nature.
MY FEEEEEELINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT. I don't give a damn about facts and reality and what Mother Nature designs, and most important I don't care about anyone who doesn't FEEEEEL exactly like I do.
Not saying that's what's going on with SOX but maybe. Give me hard numbers for the extra waste vs the positive that it did, and convince me that emotional distaste for rich evil capitalist CEOs isn't the underlying motivation.